In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, I, the inventor, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. I also grow a smaller number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits, usually to capture recessive traits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of peach tree, which has been denominated varietally as ‘Summer Princess’.
In 2003 I made a first generation hybridization using ‘August Pearl’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 10,926) nectarine as the selected seed parent and an unnamed yellow flesh peach as the selected pollen parent. The fruit of this cross was gathered that summer, and the seeds were removed, cracked, stratified, germinated, and grown as seedlings on their own root in my greenhouse facility. Upon reaching dormancy I transplanted them to a cultivated area of my experimental orchard located near Le Grand, Calif., in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). During the fruit evaluation season of 2007 I selected the present variety as a single tree from the group of seedlings described above. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of peach tree, I asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
While the present variety is similar to its seed parent, ‘August Pearl’ nectarine, in several aspects, such as producing fruit that is mostly red in skin color, clingstone in type, and firm in texture, but it is quite distinguished from it by being a yellow flesh peach instead of white flesh nectarine.
The present variety is most similar to Red Princess (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 24,729) peach by requiring about 600 chilling hours, by blooming in the mid to late season, by being self-fruitful, by having large blossoms, and by producing yellow flesh clingstone peaches that are firm, nearly full red in skin color, globose in shape, and a good tasting flavor, but is distinguished therefrom by having a larger and more vigorous tree, by having globose instead of reniform glands, and by producing fruit that is somewhat larger in size, that has a bitter kernel instead of sweet, and that matures about seventy days later.